Cleaning house.

To people living in the Western World, Zen seems strange and irrelevant. I’ve tried for years to simplify Zen’s teachings that proclaim universal truths taught by The Buddha (e.g., Dharma). I took on this task so that people could understand and profit from The Buddha’s pearls of transcendent wisdom spanning time and place, every day. For the most part, I think this has been a road to nowhere, and my words have fallen on deaf ears. 

I now no longer try to teach the nuances that can obscure the real value: right thinking leading to the right effort. But then I reflect on this matter of frustration and factor in what the Buddha said: “The greatest action is not conforming with the world’s ways, and the greatest effort is not concerned with results.” Nobody can see the future, and in ways beyond our understanding, following the road less traveled can be lonely.

The story of John Chapman (known as Johnny Appleseed) is instructive. John was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of the Mid-Atlantic region of The United States. He became a legend while still alive due to his kind, generous ways, leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples. John journeyed alone throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, including the northern counties of present-day West Virginia, planting seeds he knew would mature long after he was gone. He patiently went about his commitment with no concern for results, which he knew would take years to multiply.

Rhetoric without concrete expression is not worth the time of day, but there is presently a mood at work that troubles me greatly, and Zen offers a perspective that may be useful. To one who has studied and practiced Zen for many years, there is an inescapable conclusion which seems odd to the initiate but is true nevertheless—that we are all as different as snowflakes on the outside but fundamentally just indiscriminate snow at heart. We all appear to be uniquely different, but at our core, we are united and one. Ordinarily, all we perceive are differences, and when we are enjoying the good life, we are reluctant to share our wealth with others who appear different.

Some years back, there was a frequent political mantra that emphasized our differences and denigrated our unity and went by the handle of  Makers and Takers’. The implication in that mantra suggested that makers were singularly responsible for their own wellbeing, and takers were leeches who sucked up the life-blood earned by the makers. In his commentary on the Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, Chan Master Sheng Yen said that nobody having pleasant dreams wants to wake up. Only when they have nightmares are they eager to do so. His observation is that there is a correspondence between the magnitude of both suffering and awakening. 

While in the Marines, we put this in different terms with an idiom that a problem is never significant until it becomes your own. Then only does it seem to be meaningful. Whenever a person experiences anything (painful or otherwise), only then do they consider the merits of ideas opposite of their cherished previously held convictions. The experience might be something life-threatening to themselves or their loved ones, such as being infected with COVID-19 because they were convinced that wearing a mast was unnecessary. That is an example of clinging to political/religious dogma and, consequently, not paying attention to unfolding life. The entirety of Zen concerns the alleviation of suffering. There is no other purpose for this quest than that. And much of suffering arises by clinging to dogma and not exercising wisdom. So some reading this may think to themselves, “I don’t suffer, so Zen isn’t right for me.”

I have two rejoinders to this observation: not yet, and denial. The not yet part is the realization that it is impossible to have mortal life and not suffer because the fundamental nature of conditional life is suffering. The denial part concerns resistance (a form of attachment which creates even more suffering). Nobody wants to suffer, and unfortunately, this motivates many to stay in states of denial. The pain seems too sharp to face, so we stuff it down and try to go on with life. But this can eventually be a significant problem because it isn’t possible to keep suffering locked away forever. 

Sooner or later, the seeds of unresolved trauma we locked away in our subconscious sprout and seep out to corrode our sense of wellbeing. Strangely, this emergence of the subconscious seeds of trauma is like the apple seeds that Johnny planted. PTSD is precisely that: tragedies that couldn’t be resolved have been buried in deep recesses of our mind and sooner or later emerge into the light of day and wreak havoc.

When you learn and practice zazen (a form of yoga, originally labeled dhyana yoga), all of that suppressed mental poison gets released; you clean out the pipes and move on toward wholeness. It isn’t fun to lance that boil, but it beats living with the compacted aftermath of suppressed suffering. Along the way toward restored mental health, there can be wide swings from one depth to the opposite, but this is the necessary result of spiritual house cleaning. 

Zen is not a practice for the faint of heart. It’s only for the most desperate and those who exhibit the necessary courage to go through the anguish required to have a life worth living. And when you arrive at your goal, you realize that you can only alleviate suffering by becoming a servant to all, regardless of distinctions. Why? Because by being a servant to all is the same as serving yourself.

“The greatest action is not conforming with the world’s ways, and the greatest effort is not concerned with results.”